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Weekly Rewind: #3

Hey there, and welcome to the third installment of the Weekly Rewind. As you
know by know, we’ll take a look at all the week’s big news, our front page
poll, and the most popular games out there. E3 is next week, so it’s no
surprise that a lot of the news this week has to do with new games being
announced. As usual, send all comments to aaront [at] psxextreme.com. Enjoy!

The week’s big news…

In a statement issued today, Sony announced that the NFL GameDay, NCAA
GameBreaker, NBA ShootOut, and NCAA Final Four franchises have been placed on
hiatus until next year. Not to worry though, Sony intends to debut a new NHL
series this fall.

"As
the single largest selling genre of console games, the market for sports titles
is extremely competitive," the statement reads. "After listening to
our consumers and taking a hard look at the football and basketball franchises,
Sony Computer Entertainment America has decided to provide the development teams
with the additional time needed to make products competitive and more
importantly to provide compelling new content for our consumers."

Most of you out there are saying “big deal” and while you’re probably
being sarcastic, it IS a big deal. Back in the day of the original Playstation,
it was 989, not Sega that was pushing EA to keep its product fresh. Not only did
989 push Madden, many people thought the arcade-stylings of Gameday were
superior to the product EA Sports was delivering.

Those days are long gone, and for the past few years, 989 has been the butt
of many jokes amongst gaming journalists. As bad as many of their games have
been, however, they recognized that they needed work, and games like this
year’s MLB 2005 show that they are capable of releasing quality products when
given the time and money to do so.

This isn’t the first hiatus the series have taken, and the amount of
improvement that an extra year made the last time around was negligible. I guess
we’ll have to see what a difference a year makes for the guys at 989 this
time.

In
other news…

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 has been
announced, and not one person on the planet is surprised. I just hope
there’s no need for us to drive a car this time. Also, who isn’t looking
forward to more crappy voice acting from the pro skaters? That’s always a
hoot.

Terrel Owens lands the ESPN NFL 2005
cover. Say what you want about him, but he looks like a choir boy next to
Ray-Ray.

Electronic Arts announced the
long-rumored GoldenEye 2, which has been renamed to reflect the fact it bears no
relation to the Nintendo 64 game. Retitled GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Ummm, so
just taking the 2 off of it means that it’s totally unrelated? I think
people’s expectations for this game went way down hill with this announcement.
Doesn’t EA realize how much a sequel would sell? They’re sitting on a pile
of cash and they don’t seem to know it, which is something very un-EA-like.

Sony has trademarked the name
“Nico” in Japan, which further confirms the existence of the Ico sequel.
For those of you unfamiliar, Ico is one of the best games for the Playstation 2,
and one that should be in your collection. Oompa!

What’s hot…

1PS2-Hitman: Contracts

2PS2-NBA Ballers

3XBOX-Hitman: Contracts

4PS2-Need For Speed: Underground

5XBOX-Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora

6XBOX-NBA Ballers

7PS2-Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3

8PS2-007: Everything Or Nothing

9PS2-Mafia

10PS2-Fight Night 2004

Seriously, who is still renting Mafia? This is making me crazy. Perhaps
it’s the only thing in at Blockbuster, so people don’t have a choice. Hitman
is racking up the rentals on both the PS2 and the Xbox this week, so perhaps
people are heeding my warning of try before you buy on that one. The highly
addictive multiplayer of Pandora Tomorrow is going to keep it on these charts
for a while, which is a rare feat for an Xbox game. New to the top ten this week
is Fight Night, which has received positive reviews all around.

PSX Extreme Poll Update…

There’s a lot of optimism amongst you crazy readers out there as 37% of you
think that Sega’s going to announce a new console. 29% of you think it will be
on their own, while 8% think that it will be in conjunction with Nintendo. Now,
if it was with Nintendo, don’t you think that Nintendo would be talking about
a major announcement too? Sega is a profitable company for the first time in
years, and it’s because they are no longer making a console. There’s no
chance, none, zip, zilch, zero of them making a new console. I’m looking for
something pretty lame out of this explosive announcement – it’s just a
clever way to get people talking.

In closing…

It seems like companies no longer prefer to keep their E3 titles a secret,
and news of new games and sequels has been out of control this week. There
hasn’t been anything groundbreaking announced, however, so I think that there
are still a few aces up the sleeves of the big guys. I leave for E3 in 24 hours,
so I’d better get packing! If you have any questions or comments, please send
me an email at aaront [at] psxextreme.com . See you next week!